WESS Classical, Medieval and Renaissance Discussion Group: agenda

The Classical, Medieval and Renaissance Discussion Group will meet Saturday, January 20th from 4-6 in
Studio 5 of Hotel W. Shawn Martin, Project Librarian,Text Creation Partnership (TCP) will give a talk "Text
Creation Partnership (EEBO-TCP): The Future of Electronic Resources?" (see abstract below). Shawn's
presentation will be of interest to all members of WESS. So please come along and hear about TCP!

The Text Creation Partnership (TCP) a cooperative academic project based at the Universities of Michigan
and Oxford with the cooperation of ProQuest Information and Learning, Thomson-Gale, Newsbank-Readex and
over one hundred and fifty universities worldwide has created a database of thousands of
fully searchable texts included in ProQuest's Early English Books Online (EEBO), Gale's Eighteenth Century
Collections Online (ECCO), and Newsbank-Readex's Evans Early American Imprints image databases. TCP is
also a new model for scholarly and commercial collaboration. Thus, it has
become an interesting hybrid of a commercial product produced by librarians who are advised by scholars.
Therefore, the project pushes the boundaries of all three worlds. Yet, the value of such a project lies
not in its structure but in its use by all of these communities. How has TCP influenced teaching and
learning? How has it changed the landscape within the scholarly publishing community? How has it produced
new ways of thinking within early modern scholarship? TCP is not only a new electronic
project that increases access to materials; it is also a project that actually changes the utility of these
early materials in new, previously impossible, ways. The experience of the TCP project offers some unique
insights into how new technologies can shape the future of scholarship and what role the academic community
can and should play in influencing that future.